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The festival season has started. After two years of Corona standstill, it’s finally time again: indulge in live concerts, drift sweaty through the crowd, toast with beers, review the night of partying in a convivial atmosphere at the campsite before it starts again the next day. This time without any corona worries. Without complete cancellations, masks, without proof of vaccination or special hygiene, without limitation of guests. But is that a good idea? Especially now that the summer wave is starting and the new virus variant BA.5 is spreading?
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This weekend, among other things, the Hurricane Festival will start in Scheeßel, Lower Saxony. Tens of thousands of visitors are expected there this weekend alone. At the beginning of the month, the music festival Rock am Ring took place in the Eifel, also a major event with around 90,000 music fans on site. Some visitors then reported in a Facebook group that they had contracted Corona there. Unsurprisingly, with seven-day incidences between 200 and 400 in the country.
Are festivals driving up the incidence of corona?
Because the pandemic has shown that the larger an event, the more people meet, the more likely it is that acutely infected people will be present – and the virus can spread among the guests. Experts are not as alarmed this summer as in previous years when it comes to major outdoor events.
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The virologist Ulf Dittmer from the University Hospital Essen does not currently see such larger festivals as a dangerous driver of infection for the dynamics in Germany. “I don’t think now that such events with some infections contribute to the spread,” said the Corona expert to the WDR. “The risk outdoors is too low for that. I think a lot more infections take place in closed buildings.”
In fact, that’s the key advantage of festivals: they usually take place outdoors. “Transmissions outdoors are rare overall and make up a small proportion of the total transmission process,” the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) sums up the study situation. The reason? The air is in motion, aerosols are distributed more quickly – and the likelihood of contracting the corona virus is decreasing. Exactly how small, however, cannot be quantified.
How high is the risk of infection for festival visitors?
According to the RKI, this only applies if the minimum distance is maintained. Even if the risk of infection is lower than indoors, it can happen that you get infected when you visit a festival outdoors. There are enough situations in which people stand close together during the concerts and afterwards. The conditions are ideal for the virus: Especially when celebrating exuberantly, maintaining a distance of one to two meters from others is not fulfilled. The closer you stand together, the more likely it is that larger and infectious virus particles will be transmitted when speaking, shouting and singing. There is then talk of a droplet infection. So it’s not just about the aerosols, which are more likely to be distributed in the air outside.
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If you want to reduce this risk, you should take precautions. How high the risk of infection is when visiting the festival depends not only on the number of people, but also on specific behavior. “Against the background of increasing incidences and a forecast increase due to the more widespread use of the omicron sublines BA.4 and BA.5, the recommendations for infection prevention should be observed more closely,” advises the RKI in its current weekly report.
Mask, test, vaccinate: This also helps with BA.5
That means, for example: If many people meet close together, it’s better to wear a mask again. Anyone who takes a quick test before or during the festival visit reduces the risk of unknowingly infecting someone. Anyone experiencing symptoms such as a runny nose, sore throat or cough should stay at home, isolate themselves from others and have their family doctor take a test to see if it is Corona. This applies regardless of the vaccination status. It is also advisable to install the Corona warning app on your cell phone. You will be informed about this if you were unknowingly close to an infected person.
And, as the Hurricane festival organizers themselves emphasized at the end of August last year: “You can go get vaccinated. super easy The stuff is there. If your grandmother can do it, then so can you.” Because unvaccinated people are at least slightly more likely to transmit the virus than vaccinated people. Nevertheless, basic immunization and those who have been boosted can still become infected and pass the virus on to others – especially with the new Omikron variant. But: Anyone who has been vaccinated three times is usually well protected against a severe course of Covid 19 – even with BA.5.
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